Valentine: #52ancestors

Arthur and Mary Flynn, together with their children:
Lester, Nellie, Sadie and William. ca. 1910.

I generally don't think of my ancestors as romantics. Pragmatic, yes; romantic, no. Life was hard and it has always seemed to me people needed to focus the majority of their energy on just getting by. My people anyway. They were farmers and tradesman and day-laborers. Romance was for the wealthy.

Yet, my great-great-great grandparents Arthur Flynn and Mary Clarissa Calhoun were married on Valentine's Day, 1865. The end of the Civil War which had gripped the nation for four long years was still several months away. It was winter – in between harvest and planting – a season when many farmers found time to marry. It was a Tuesday. So, why get married on that particular day? Maybe it was due to a touch of romance!

Mary was the oldest of ten children in a family with deep New England roots in Connecticut. Arthur had emigrated from Ireland less than a decade earlier. Their romance already seemed a bit improbable. Although the newspaper notice above from the Hartford Daily Courant (Friday, February 17, 1865, pg 2) provides scant information, a few more details about their wedding can be found in a volume of reminiscences, Litchfield County Sketches, by Rev. Newell Meeker Calhoun. Newell was Mary's brother and his book provides many insights into their family life. It was hard work, but it wasn't all work, as I discovered.

Adele Anais Toudouze.
Wedding fashion, 1865.

Newell described the farm where the Calhoun children grew up in Morris, Connecticut in great detail. The kitchen which was the heart of the home, even then, where the children stood in the large fireplace in the summer months to view the stars above. Where on winter nights the family sewed hooks and eyes onto cards to make extra money. There were two parlors; one a sitting room for receiving friends and the other which was "only opened on state occasions."

In that state parlor, Newell writes, "were a funeral and a wedding, when a son went away to the home prepared for him and a daughter to make one for herself." The funeral was that of younger brother, Willie, who died in 1863 of encephalitis, just a month shy of his 7th birthday. The wedding was Mary and Arthur's. Although no picture of their wedding day survives, the photograph above of Arthur and Mary and their four children is a testament to their enduring marriage. Mary died in Nebraska, at the home of her daughter Nellie, after a long illness in 1910. Arthur lived until 1921. They are buried together at Rose Hill Cemetery in Shenandoah, Iowa, where they moved after their marriage.

I'd love to think that they both had a little bit of poetry in their soul and their choice of wedding date was very deliberate, indeed! Happy Valentine's Day! And happy anniversary to Mary and Arthur, married 153 years ago, today.

Hidden Mothers and Hellion Fathers

Scene from Meeting of Minds (1977-1982), 
with Jayne Meadows, as Catherine The Great.

If you're of a certain age you might remember a TV-series which aired on PBS from 1977-1982, hosted by Steve Allen, called Meeting of Minds. In it, actors played characters in history brought together for a conversation about a variety of topics. This week's prompt, "Invite to Dinner" for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is the ancestral version!

Of course, when given the opportunity to question a long-gone ancestor, most of us immediately think of those people who are the brick walls in our family tree. With that in mind, I made a list of several people I would love to have the opportunity to ask a few questions of.

Hidden Mothers

Tracing our female ancestors can be such a challenge before civil registration was required. Women were all-too-often invisible. Here are a couple such women I would like to have a sit-down chat with:

1. Mariam Williams Kirkendall (ca. 1822- ??)
   Married at 16 to Robert Kirkendall in Wisconsin in 1838, Mariam disappears following their divorce in 1849. Their divorce records are the stuff of headline news today, both sides alleging infidelity, drunkenness and more. Indicative of the time, custody of their children was awarded to their father. Curiously, she is mentioned as Robert's first wife in his obituary but her fate after 1850 remains a mystery.
2. Mary Grainger Keely Johns (1834-1871)
   For many years Mary was one of those dead-end branches of my family tree. Family stories suggested that she was married before she married my ancestor, Daniel Teats Johns. No one knew, however, if Keely was her maiden name or that of her first husband. Turns out it was the name of her former husband, but many other questions about her life still remain.
3. Catherine Thomas Younker (1834-1912)

   

   Wikipedia: Hidden mother photograph

   
   When did Catherine arrive in the United States? Born in Gilsa, Germany, Catherine and her siblings were orphaned at an early age. How and why did she make her way to Illinois after her arrival? So many questions, so few answers.

Hellion Fathers

1. Cuyler Shults (1831–1917)
   By far the most irascible of my ancestors, Cuyler murdered his neighbor and was sentenced to hang. His sentence was eventually commuted by the governor of Nebraska due to his advanced age. The trial transcripts suggest a tense relationship with his neighbor, Jamie Farr, but is that the whole story? Inquiring minds what to know!
2. Willie Henry Younker (1894-1929)
   Family tradition has it Willie telegrammed his then-wife Meda with the news he wanted a divorce while she away was visiting her family. He neglected to mention another woman was expecting his child. He died just days after his 34th birthday, so the opportunity to get any answers from him directly was lost when his children were still quite young.  
3. Owen Flynn (ca. 1795-ca. 1864)
   Okay, truth be told, I don't know for certain Owen was a bad guy. But he is the only one of my immigrant ancestors who decided to forego the opportunities of the New World and return to his homeland. Wouldn't you love to know what it was about America he didn't like enough to make returning to Ireland seem like the better idea? 

Curiously, every one of these ancestors is on my father's side of the family. He didn't find it all that amusing when I told him there was a murderer in the family, however. In typical dry, droll Dad fashion, his response was "Why don't you find people like this on your mother's side of the family?" Good question, Dad! I would love for the opportunity to find out the answer, if only I could sit down to dinner with one, or all, of these ancestors!

What does it mean to be Irish (in America)?

Famine Irish. No Irish Need Apply. Lace-curtain Irish. The Kennedys.

What do you think of when you think of Irish-Americans? Many different images may come to mind, but what does it really mean to be Irish-American? As of 2012, 34.1 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry, more than seven times Ireland's population of 4.6 million today.¹ And, of course, on St. Patrick's Day everyone's Irish!

But when we think of Irish immigration to America it is integrally linked with the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1850) when 500,000 Irish fled their homeland for America between 1850 and 1860.² Those who immigrated during this period were Catholic and largely rural tenant farmers from the south and west of Ireland .³ They were the first wave of poor refugees to arrive on America's shores and eastern cities -- founded by Puritan Protestants -- were ill-prepared for the influx. This led to rampant discrimination and open prejudice against the Irish whose Catholicism represented "Old World" oppression.⁴

This composite picture is the one most people have of Irish immigrants. Yet, this is not the story of my Irish ancestors. My forefather, Owen Flynn, was a carpenter by trade, as were several of his sons, from the Irish province of Ulster. County Cavan, where the family originated is in now part of the Republic of Ireland and is a collar county of Northern Ireland. In America, the family was Episcopalian; its Irish counterpart the Church of Ireland. My ancestors immigrated after the major wave of famine Irish, and had enough financial wherewithal that Owen was able to return to Ireland when he found the New World not to his liking. His children, however, remained.

All this serves as a set up for an Irish folktale in my family. My grandmother always maintained that her Irish relatives had "loaned money to Ireland." Now, which of her ancestors might have actually done this is unknown. During most of her childhood she lived near her Flynn grandparents, and spent a great deal of time with them so likely she heard this story from her grandfather, Lester. Her Irish-born great-grandfather, Arthur Flynn died in 1921, the year before she was born and was prosperous enough that he might have been the one to donate to the cause. But which cause?

As Irish Protestants, was the family in favor of Great Britain's continued rule of Ireland or for Home Rule and Irish independence? Many Americans did help finance Irish republican movements in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁵ Are you more Irish if you favored independence? Many of Northern Ireland's Protestants were Scottish, having immigrated themselves to Ireland in the 18th century. Our understanding of our heritage is nuanced and shaded by myth and memory. I consider myself an Irish-American and proud of it. Is my Irish story the quintessential one? No. But I don't think it makes me any less Irish and helps illustrate each of our ancestor's stories is unique.

What I know for sure is my grandmother believed if we "ever got the money back from Ireland" we'd be rich. Now if I could only find that receipt!

Éirinn go Brách!

                                                       

Sources:

1. United States Census Bureau. Facts for Features: Irish-American Heritage Month (March) and St. Patrick's Day (March 17): 2014.
2. PBS. Destination America: European Emigration to the U.S. 1851-1860
3. The History Place. Irish Potato Famine.
4. The Society Pages. Negative Stereotypes of the Irish.
5. History Learning Site. The Great Famine of 1845.

Our Irish progenitors, Martha and Owen

The story of my branch of the Flynn family in America begins with Owen Flynn and Martha Crawford. For many years the only consistent detail passed down about the family was that they emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland, and even that was unsubstantiated for many years. More about that in a later post… 

Biographical sketches of two of Owen and Martha’s sons, James and William, add some details to this family’s immigration story. Although similar in broad terms, there are some key differences. In a sketch of James Crawford Flynn published in Walter B. Steven’s  St. Louis, the Fourth City, 1764-1909 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1909, pp. 260-261), it states he came to the U.S. in 1857 and "joined his sisters, who were living in Connecticut." 

The 1860 census corroborates this as James is living with his sister, Sarah Flynn Curtiss, her husband and brother Arthur, who likely immigrated together with James. The sketch goes on to say his parents “came about ten years later” and after his mother’s death, his father returned to Ireland, where he later died. A briefer sketch of James appeared  in The Book of St. Louisans by Albert Nelson Marquis (St. Louis: St. Louis Republic, 1912. 2nd Edition, pg. 201) also states James immigrated in 1857.

James’ younger brother, William C. Flynn, was profiled in W. L. Kershaw’s History of Page County, Iowa (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1909, pp. 409-410), but his account of Owen and Martha's journey to America is slightly different:

The parents came to the United States in 1863, the family home being established in Connecticut. The climate, however, did not agree with the father and he returned to his native land in 1864, there passing away three years later. The mother, after her return to Ireland, found it lonesome without her children, who all sought the advantages offered by the new world, and the same year in which she had accompanied her husband on his trip back to the Emerald Isle witnessed her second arrival in the United States. While en route for America, however, she contracted a severe cold, from the effects of which she died a short time later.

So, a few questions about the sequence of events emerge from these two accounts: 

• Did Martha die first and then Owen returned to Ireland?
• Did Owen and Martha both return to Ireland?
• Did Martha leave Ireland for a second time to be reunited with her children before her husband died or after?

The one detail that can be confirmed is that Martha Crawford Flynn died in Naugatuck, New Haven County, Connecticut, on September 24, 1866, at the age of 63, and is buried at Hillside Cemetery, in that city. 

The date of death for Owen -- about 1867, based on William’s sketch -- is right on the cusp of the inauguration of civil death registration in Ireland: 1864. A search of Ireland, Civil Registration Deaths Index, 1864-1958, on Ancestry for deaths of any Owen Flynns between 1864 and 1869 yields several possibilities:

Name:	Estimated  Birth Year:	Date of  Registration:	Death Age:	Registration  District:
Owen Flynn	1800	1869	69	Carrick-On- Shannon
Owen Flynn	1796	1869	73	Boyle
Owen Flynn	1799	1869	70	Longford
Owen Flynn	1798	1869	71	Dublin South
Owen Flynn	1795	1865	70	Mohill

Further research is necessary to determine if any of these are the Owen Flynn we’re seeking! What other questions do these sketches prompt? If you have any details that could help fill out this story, please share below!